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A Course to Help Writers Find Their Voices

I read a statistic in the New York Times that said 81{9ac618bfda39dd0c8c9a0232963cb9a2adfe54a7367c2d4954ad9e847b2e5305} of Americans, when polled by a small publisher, admitted they had a “book in them”. I’d say, from my incredibly informal research (by that I mean, my life) this seems right.

Most people I meet, when we get to talking, tell me about they book they’d write—someday—if time and space and money and “life” ever permitted them.

Here’s the saddest part of that statistic—most people will never do it.

Writing is really hard.

Some of what makes it difficult is logistics—questions like, “Where do I start? What should I include? What do I leave out?” But most of what makes it difficult is the sort of invisible resistance that seems to show up anytime we try to create something.

I work with writers on a daily basis and the biggest obstacle they are facing when it comes to writing is not a lack of skills or expertise.

The biggest obstacles they face are things like:

Distractions

Insecurity

A fear of insignificance

Uncertainty about their voice

In fact, most of the writers I work with—even those who have never been trained as writers, but are moms or lawyers or executives or business owners or teachers—are far more gifted as writers than they give themselves credit for.

They could write a book someday. They should write a book someday. They will write a book someday—if they can get over the obstacles I listed above.

Here’s the craziest part about all of this.

I have two degrees in writing. I have a bachelor’s degree in Writing and a Masters in Teaching Writing. I could put together lesson plan after lesson plan filled with the skills of great writers. But learning those skills won’t help you as much as you think they will.

At least not if you didn’t understand your purpose as a writer.

Not if you don’t understand the why behind your writing—who you are and where you fit.

Not until you discover your unique voice.

This is the predicament I found myself in a few years ago.

I had been writing for as long as I could remember. I had gone to school to be a writer, had started a blog and learned everything I could about narrowing the focus of that blog and growing my platform. I had followed dozens of other writers and tried to learn from what they were doing.

But at the end of the day, I didn’t know who I was as a writer.

I didn’t understand what made me different.

And because of that I would say to myself, “well, there are all these other people who are better writers than me, and they’re saying the same things I want to say, so what’s the point? Why should I even try? Why would I keep writing?”

What was stopping me from writing wasn’t that I didn’t have the skills to be a writer. It was that I didn’t understand:

Where I came from and how this was connected to what I wanted to say

What made my message unique from everyone else’s

How I could connect in an authentic way with my audience—without being cheesy, but without being totally self-centered

How to keep the creative energy flowing

That’s why I created this course for writers.

After working with writers for the past several years—and being a writer myself—I finally decided I wanted to do something to help.

I wanted all of us to be able to live into our brilliant and beautiful voices.

So I developed a set of lessons and assignments to help writers uncover the unique voice already inside of them. My approach has four parts (I developed these intuitively, based on the questions hundreds of writers were asking me and the questions I was asking myself).

The parts went like this:

Where do you come from?

What do you want to say?

Who do you want to say it to?

How can you nurture your innate creative spirit?

What I found is, when I could help a writer answers these four questions for themselves, all the other excuses and blockages and supposed “obstacles” keeping them from what they wanted to write simply faded away.

It didn’t always come easily (nothing important ever does) but when I could give them a little support, they were far more likely to make progress.

It was important to me to make this material accessible to as many writers as possible.

So, I decided to film the whole thing.

I invited my friend Raechel over to my house and guided her through the process, one-on-one. She’s a gifted communicator and I knew she would benefit from the curriculum I had created—and that others would benefit from listening to her process the information.

I also created a 42 page workbook to walk each writer through the process.

And here’s the best part—after months (and really years) in the making, I get to release this resource to the world in about two weeks.

This course is going to help you:

Know where to start when it comes to writing

Overcome the needless obstacles getting in your way

Generate and re-generate creative energy

Answer the questions, “who am I?” and “why does my voice matter?”

Connect in an authentic way to your audience

Understand your message

Ultimately, I hope this course gives you the confidence you need in who you are as a writer to continue on the path to becoming the writer you were always meant to be.

Check out this video to learn more about the course. If you’re interested, visit the page and sign up to learn more. Also, if you know any writers who need to discover their unique voice, please pass the message on to them!

5 thoughts on “A Course to Help Writers Find Their Voices”

I’m so excited that you are doing this! I had always wanted to be a writer but somewhere along the way just stopped writing. I want to write again but when I get on and start writing not even half way through it I just erase it, close my computer and walk away. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. I hope this can help me in some way to find it again!

I look forward to learning more about this course. It sounds like it might be just what I need if it is something I can afford. My writing has been rather erratic at best lately but my day job has been pretty busy too but I know that is just an excuse.